The Test Ban Treaty Would Help North Korea

More than ever we need a reliable deterrent.

By

Paula A. DeSutter

Updated June 1, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

North Korea has announced that it has tested another nuclear weapon. Detection of North Korea's October 2006 nuclear test has been touted as evidence that the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is verifiable. CTBT advocates will undoubtedly make the same argument for this week's test and assert that CTBT is important and that the United States should ratify it. Here is why both arguments are wrong.

Verification has two purposes: detection and deterrence. If you can't detect, you can't deter. But even if you can detect, you may not be able to deter.

With regard to seismic detection, North Korea is a best-case scenario. It is small, its known test site is granite, and it is not a seismically active region. In 2006 we collected noble gases to confirm the explosion was nuclear. Moreover, North Korea announces its tests. Detection of announced tests cannot be sold as proof of verifiability.

As for deterrence, it's a simple concept: convince others that the cost of taking an action you wish to prevent is far greater than any benefits. At a minimum, violators should not benefit from their violation.

The Obama administration's special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, has been touring the region warning of "dire consequences" if North Korea tests. Strong words, but likely empty of substance. Will we bomb their nuclear sites? Unlikely, even if we knew where most of them were. Trade restrictions? North Korea has nothing to sell to non-rogue states. Stop food aid? Americans don't want to punish the starving slave-citizens of North Korea for actions over which they have no influence. In fact, we've taught North Korea since the early 1990s that crime pays.

The Clinton administration had declared its policy goal with respect to North Korea to be "regime change." North Korea then blatantly violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The U.S. was in the lead-up to an NPT review conference where the goal was the indefinite extension of that treaty. The arms controllers saw North Korea's violation as threatening a successful review conference. So the Clinton administration had direct negotiations resulting in the 1994 Agreed Framework. North Korea was given heavy fuel oil, food and offered two light-water nuclear reactors at no cost. All it had to do was freeze plutonium reprocessing facilities at Yongbyon until new reactors were near completion, at which point it would have to dismantle Yongbyon. The new Clinton policy goal: regime stability in order to ensure implementation of the agreed framework. So by violating the NPT, North Korea got the most powerful country in the world to abandon regime change and declare that it was in our interest to keep the regime in place. Crime paid.

In the initial aftermath of the 2006 test, there were actions to impose costs. The U.S. led the adoption of U.N. resolution 1718, which required member states to prevent the transfer of weapons-related goods to North Korea and called for financial sanctions. But these measures were abandoned by the Bush administration in favor of accommodating the regime so talks could continue. We quit asking for complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament. We pretended that North Korean promises were something other than a farce. We pretended that disablement at Yongbyon was something other than an opportunity for the North Koreans to refurbish the facilities. We pretended that there was no uranium enrichment program, despite evidence to the contrary. We halted financial sanctions, which were the first response to North Korean bad actions that seemed to influence the country. Again, crime paid.

North Korea's engineers and scientists will gain information from their tests to help them improve their nuclear weapons, and perhaps market their skills to other rogues. We cannot reverse the knowledge they gained. These tests are irreversible.

Suppose that both the United States and North Korea were parties to the CTBT. Despite popular arms-control rhetoric, the treaty would give us no more leverage over North Korea than we have now. Pyongyang violated agreements in the past and would be likely to test. But the U.S. would still be prohibited from ever testing its nuclear weapons to ensure their safety and reliability and to strengthen deterrence. Our nuclear umbrella, already thin, will become increasingly tattered as the North hones its weapons and delivery systems.

There is a link between the North Korean nuclear tests and CTBT, but it argues against U.S. ratification, not for it.

Ms. DeSutter was assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance and implementation from 2002-09.

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